Cosmos

A film by Andrzej Zulawski

Witold has just failed his law exams, and Fuchs has recently quit his job at a Parisian fashion label. Both are going to spend a few days in the countryside, and choose to stay at a so-called family inn. They are welcomed by a sparrow, hanged in the forest by a string. Then, an equally hanged piece of wood, and a series of strange signs on the ceiling, in the garden and in the woods.

In the guesthouse, there is a servant - who has a strange, twisted mouth - and a young house mistress whom Witold falls obsessively in love with.She’s already married to a decent young man, but is she decent herself?The third hanging  a cat  is the work of Witold. Why?Could the next one be human?

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Cast

Crew

Written and Directed by Andrzej Żuławski

Based on the novel “Cosmos” by Witold GombrowiczDirector of Photography André Szankowski AIP-AFCOriginal Music Andrzej KorzynskiSound Jean-Paul Mugel, Thomas Robert, Nicolas d’HalluinEditor Julia Gregory1st Assistant Director Carlos da Fonseca ParsotamDecors Paula SzaboCostumes Patricia SaalburgLine producer Ana Pinhão MouraProduced by Paulo BrancoAn Alfama Films Production and Leopardo Filmes co-productionWith the participation of CNC, ICA, RTPWith the support of Câmara Municipal de SintraDeveloped with the support of the MEDIA program of the European Unionand PROCIREP

About Andrzej Zulawski

Having written and directed all of his films, Andrzej Zulawski has created works inhabited by magnetic performances, combining destructive passions, violent Manichaeism and lyricism. He is particularly acclaimed for his great talent as a filmmaker and actors’s director, and has worked with Romy Schneider, Sophie Marceau, Isabelle Adjani, Francis Huster, Jacques Dutronc, Guillaume Canet, Lambert Wilson or Valerie Kaprisky, amongst many others.

Andrzej Zulawski was born in 1940 in Poland, and grew up between Warsaw and Paris, following his father who was both a Polish diplomat and a poet. After finishing school, Zulawski settled down in Paris to pursue his studies in cinema at the IDHEC, and in social sciences at the Sorbonne. He then returned to Poland to become the assistant director of the prominent Andrzej Wajda on the shooting of SAMSON (1960) and THE ASHES (1965). He also published both his own poems as well as film critiques for the Polish review Film between 1966 and 1968.

He made his directorial debut in 1967 with a medium length film entitled THE STORY OF TRIUMPHANT LOVE, for which he earned the Honours diploma of the Los Angeles Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. His first full length feature, THE THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT (1971) was widely acclaimed and earned many international prizes. As Zulawski’s career grew, he had difficulties with the Soviet regime, eventually facing censorship for his film THE DEVIL (1972), and thus decided to return to France where he found greater tolerance for his freedom of tone and his outrageous form.

In 1974, he co-wrote and directed THAT MOST IMPORTANT THING: LOVE (1975), an adaptation of Christopher Frank’s “La Nuit Americaine”. The film’s success allowed him to return to Poland, where he shot SUR LE GLOBE D’ARGENT, an adaptation of his great uncle’s, Jerry Zulawski, science-fiction novel. Yet the Polish authorities suspended the shooting just days before its end, and the film was shown in Poland only ten years later, in 1987.

He then went to Germany to shoot the French-German coproduction POSSESSION in Berlin. The film is about a marital crisis between a secret agent and a woman possessed by a strange power. It was selected for the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival where the lead actress Isabelle Adjani won the award for Best Actress.

The shooting of MAD LOVE, based on “The Idiot” by Dostoïevski, was particularly important for Żuławski, as it was his first encounter with Sophie Marceau, who would later become his wife. He directed her again in MY NIGHTS ARE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN YOUR DAYS, adapted from Raphaële Billetdoux’s bestseller, and, later in FIDELITY (2000), freely inspired by “The Princess of Cleves” by Madame de La Fayette and produced by Paulo Branco.

Zulawski has also worked for theatre and has written more than a dozen of novels and short stories since 1970. In 1996, he was awarded the Legion of Honour and the Knighthood of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.

For the past 15 years, he has been living in Poland, where he was called upon to participate in the the reconstruction and the elaboration of Poland’s cultural policy, which had to be reconstructed after the fall of Communism.

Filmography:

2000: Fidelity1996: Chamanka1991: La note bleue1989: Boris Godounov1989: My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days1987: Sur le globe d’argent1985: Mad Love1984: La femme publique1981: Possession1975: That Most Important Thing: Love1972: The Devil1972: The Third Part of the Night

Locarno Film Festival

Official Selection In Competition

Andrzej Zulawski

Director's Note

This novel by Witold Gombrowicz, certainly the one I admire most in his work, is a gem, a little perverse and sharp diamond. I had never thought of making a film out of it: perhaps due to my admiration, or perhaps because all adaptations of the writer have proven disappointing, or even ridiculous. The man was supremely intelligent, his writing capricious, full of intrigues veiled by a surreal humor, that is to say, in the simplest case, whimsical. Or - and - black.

It took Paulo Branco, one of Europe’s most enlightened producers - but also one of the most cultured – to make me believe that an adaptation of "Cosmos" for cinema was not only possible, but really exciting. Together, we had already made FIDELITY, an adaptation of "The Princess of Cleves" for the screen, 14 years ago.

"Cosmos"?

A thriller, a love story, an exploration of the human heart in its youth.

A little frightening, very funny when it wants to.

Two young men are spending a few days of rest, near the sea and the mountains. In the French countryside. The protagonist - Witold himself - has just failed his law exams, whereas Fuchs, his sidekick, also from Paris, has just been fired from his job in fashion. They’re both thrifty so they choose to stay at a so-called 'family inn'. On their way there, they come across a sparrow that has been hanged in the forest by a string. There's also a hanging piece of wood nearby, and when they arrive at the inn, they find a series of strange signs on the ceilings and the garden.

The signs seem intentional. A window, a small room with everyday objects, all intertwined.

A feather, some staples, but also an axe whose handle points out at something - what?

After the discovery that a cat has been hanged, the guests and owners of the inn retire to the mountainside, to try and find explanations and catharsis.

We follow the plot behind closed doors, with all of the density and sexuality of Witold Gombrowicz's novel; perverse and at times humorous, sharp and brutal at once, disturbing and – one might say - Hitchcockian.

The human heart is dark, it wants light, will it succeed? All of this is sewn through little bits, little nothings, greater crimes than reason likes to admit. It’s a "suspense" and a drama, and a comedy.

Screenplay – actors – discipline are, I think, the three keywords of this film full of both suspense and passionate love.

Andrzej Żuławski

News about Cosmos

Never Ever selected for the 73rd Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica

Never Ever will be Out of Competition at the 73rd Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica. Adapted from The Body Artist by DON DELILLO, the film will be released in November 23rd in France.